don't stay
by vivafiction
Summary: they build everything from the ground up -— jet & zuko. jetko week.
1. —instinct

**title** — don't stay  
**pairing** — jet & zuko  
**warnings** — none  
**etc** — ffn could always use some more jetko, i think.

…

"Hold on," that deep laugh had sounded, young, bright eyes turning towards that voice attentively, "hold on, Jet, we'll be home soon."

It's the first thought that flashes across his mind after the rage dies down into something minutely vicious, toiling with remorse instead. How _could_ he, how _dare_ he suggest that there was a home there? How could he, when Jet remembered so vividly the broody, downcast boy who'd felt that same intangible memory of home that he had?

_We'll be home soon_, his father had told him, and they'd gone home, and Jet had gone to play in the forest, come back only to see it all incinerating. Li had been like that, because Jet knew what it looked like, even in eyes as yellow as his, to see reflections of fire destroying everything you loved.

And Li had been Zuko, and Zuko had been Fire Nation, but he was just like Jet, gone for a moment only to lose everything.

Jet didn't _care_ that Zuko was reaching out now, because he wanted no part of a home in the Fire Nation, when every deep, crimson piece of décor made him flinch with memories that could bring tears to the creases of his eyes. That was no power he wanted to turn over to anyone else, least of all Li—Zuko—who'd already made a fool of him once with those thin, pink lips and calloused fingers over his skin.

Friends, he'd said when Smellerbee asked where he disappeared to, they'd been nothing more than friends and Jet didn't keep _track_, it was in his blood to distance himself from these things, something he did without thinking about, really. The same way those memories were in his blood, a constant reminder, a broken moral compass.

"Jet?"

But Zuko is real, and even Jet knows when he turns his back, _if_ he turns his back to leave, that fire will not consume him.

(_Because he _is_ fire, and even if everything else is charred to dust, he will still have _him, _so why not have something that will last?_)

…

**notes** — jetko week has a tumblr, if you wanna know the prompts, then pm me and i'll direct you the way! (or, jetko-week on tumblr works too.)


	2. —stubborn

**title** — don't stay  
**pairing** — jet & zuko  
**warnings** — sexual situations and adult themes, slightly  
**etc** — sorta loosely inspired by my senpais' lejet rp.

…

He had been adamant about Jet getting the proper amount of rest _(because his cheeks were flushed and his eyes were glazed and there was _something_ about his sway that didn't settle right in Zuko's stomach_), but he hadn't realized that the way Jet seemed to become foggy with sickness was the same dangerous flush of his features that had ended in Zuko smashing his lips against his and shifting his way down his jaw.

That night had been alcohol and intense stares, roaming fingers and deviously flicking tongues into mouths, and that night had _not_ been something to think about as he pressed a cool cloth to Jet's forehead.

The fucker could probably see it in the threads of his facial expression, because he winds his arms around his neck lazily and pulls him down, hard, until Zuko has no choice but to roll onto the other side of the bedroll and tolerate the ridge of Jet's nose pressing into his neck. "I don't," he sounds harsh as he pries those fingers from around his neck, but he doesn't move even though there are half a dozen things to do, "_want_ what you've got."

"Oh, come on, Li," Jet's voice twinges with hoarse sickness and Zuko senses a cough rising, but somehow he manages to stifle it as he slides his hand over his chest, feels the broad and tense muscles as Jet shifts his fingers lower and lower. He turns his face into Zuko's neck, and he's about a few seconds from telling Jet to cut his shit out until those fever scalded fingers brush his skin. Zuko thrives on fire, on the pulses of heat from the sun overhead and candles and stove tops covered by kettles, and Jet's body is hot, _so hot_ that he suspects as he rolls onto him, that he could bend his flesh with the sheer force of will.

Jet grins up at him, even at the cross look on his features, though he'd look miserable to anyone else, because Jet knows better. "It'd make sense," Jet says with his fingernails sticking the sharp jut of Zuko's hips, tracing them idly, "if you were to get sick, because we're _friends_, you know?" His hands converge, drift lower until Zuko squirms. It's only Jet who does this, who can still manage to be in charge on his back and his mind completely clouded with sick heat. "Friends do _things_ together," Jet's fingers are calloused but welcome over his erection (when the fuck had he gotten so aroused because he'd sworn there was still laundry to do), dry and slightly discomforting in the shift of their clothes.

"We do _things_ together," he punctuates with a finger swiping over his head and Zuko grits his teeth so harshly he suspects they will break. He bends his body forward until their foreheads collide, presses his lips against Jet's, and starts to formulate how he'll deal with whatever petty argument arises over his apparent stubborn streak later.

…

**notes** — i'm (in)conveniently two days behind, sigh.


	3. —masks

**title** — don't stay  
**pairing** — jet & zuko  
**warnings** — none  
**etc** — a very loose interpretation of jet's masks

…

There was something troubling about the way that Zuko always proposed this question; it varied from a gentle suggestion outside in the gardens (that he inevitably tore up because chaos and fighting was in his blood) to a snarled question after a long, infuriating day of pomp and politics, to a plea murmured into the thick of tangled, brown hair. It didn't help that Jet said no every time, because it didn't _matter_ how many times he asked, he'd always be fiercely opposed to the idea of making a permanent home in the Fire Nation.

The small detail being that Jet had been living in the palace for the past seventeen months was immaterial in the argument, Jet had assured him the first time he'd asked.

There were some things he couldn't do, he reminded himself as he sprawled out in the garden, dirt caked under his fingernails, swords hooked into the flowerbeds, and one of them was calling this wretched place _home_. It didn't matter how many pretenses he put on for being with Zuko in public, pretending as if there was nothing going on between the two of them. What mattered was that the one place he'd ever called his home had been dissolved into ash and he'd promised himself that there was no way to build another one, _anywhere_.

But he'd lied, because small pieces of home were with this stupid, troublesome, tea serving Lord.

As much as Jet tried to hide it, pretend that there was nothing there, he had a weakness to the fact that Zuko relented around him. However stubborn he could be, a lengthy day or a crooked smile could completely unravel him into Jet's lap with soothing fingers pulling through that silky hair of his, lean limbs coiling around his shoulders protectively.

Oh, he'd tried to hide his feelings in forms of rage and terror and fear because those things were real, they were all the things he'd ever known about the Fire Nation, but it was difficult to hide them when everything changed and suddenly they were comfortable with one another, and suddenly Zuko was saying _I love you_ instead of that roundabout way he'd always answered _yeah, me too_, and there was no way to fight it any more.

So when he'd walked in on Jet folding a golden sash around his waist, he'd been surprised to see the last of the protective barriers shatter in his presence. Jet fumbled, albeit on purpose or by instinct of never having held anything as rich and smooth as the Fire Lord's clothing, and when Zuko grinned because he knew what this meant, Jet just turned his head aside and wondered how long he'd last here.

…

**notes** — the blue spirit would have been an easy cop-out, but it's important to know jet is as guarded as zuko, secrets or not. weee post-war.


	4. —alternate universe

**title** — don't stay  
**pairing** — jet & katara, jet & zuko  
**warnings** — none  
**etc** — this is a peter pan au, teehee.

…

Katara had been amazed to watch the Sun Warrior woman pull Jet close, her long hair swept up in an intricate hairstyle with several blocks wrapped around curls of hair, her smile radiant and turned down towards him. After all, he'd saved her son (she _still_ didn't understand how he'd been so fast, how he'd just known), and she smiled as the woman laid the ornately designed beads around his neck, an honorary tribute to his heroics.

He _had_ deserved it, no doubt. Katara's heavy blue dressed weighed her down too much to be of any help, no matter that she could swim as strong as any boy her age.

But the celebration was beyond the scope of her understanding and even though she expected Jet to return to her side—he'd _always_ been at her side, there to scoop her up and pull her into trouble, because that was what he _did_—she found something welling in the pit of her stomach at the sight of them.

The Sun Warrior boy and _her_ Jet.

He _was_ a cute boy, snarling nevertheless and horribly scarred. His features were slightly round but narrow, sharp jaw and sharp nose and bright golden eyes, almost the same color as the bangles over his bicep. She wanted to look away—curse them for being at the precipice of adulthood, for being fourteen and red-blooded—but he didn't wear a shirt and the cut of his hips disappeared into a loosely draped fabric.

He was cute and Jet was making eyes at him, those eyes he made when he'd found those boots with the steel toes, no matter how ratty they'd been, the face he made when he managed to look past flaws of things. He was good at that, making a place for everything and everyone.

Katara folded her arms across her chest and turned her head away as the boy started to walk Jet through the chants and turns of some Sun Warrior dance; she could tell with the way their palms raised to the sky and his long tail of hair swayed in the breeze, and the fleeting smile on his lips.

Something froze her blood when they leaned together, his chest pressed into the uneven fabric of Jet's makeshift armor, and she wanted to storm over and yank that silly ponytail of his _away_ from her Jet because she couldn't _believe_ the way he was looking at him.

They were both smirking, (it must be a boy thing, really, because they looked so _stupid_), and she could see the boy's lips move, hear him mumble a name—_his_ name, _Zuko_—and something lit up in Jet's eyes.

Katara knew there was an invitation on his lips, but even so she snorted and petulantly entertained the idea of shoving this boy back into the water sometime soon.

…

**notes** — one of my friends, the talented **songofhopeandhonor**, wrote some peter pan!jetko a long while ago and i have been unable to shake the tigerlily!ko out of my head, so here it is. i sorta think tigerlily and peter are super cute, and apparently there's a book about them somewhere.


	5. —boundary

**title** — don't stay  
**pairing** — jet & zuko  
**warnings** — none  
**etc** — a little disjointed because boundaries, haha.

…

There are just some places Zuko will never be able to reach.

…

Exasperation settles in his bones with such density that even Jet traipsing into the teashop doesn't send that flicker of nervous relief blazing across the bottom of his stomach, even with that lopsided smirk of his turned right in Zuko's direction. Their eyes lock for a moment and Jet starts to mouth something, but he turns on his heel so hard that his head spins with the recoil, and if the door wasn't revolving he'd have slammed it behind him.

He braces his hands on the counter until his knuckles blot red and white, pulses with deep, even breaths until his patience starts to shift again, but when he ducks back from behind the door with a tray of cakes—and maybe they're a _little_ old, just so he has an excuse to give them to Jet, and just so he has an excuse to watch Jet fuss over it—his armored back is retreating through the entrance.

Something tastes stale in the corners of his mouth at the sight.

…

"Hey," his head tips down as he sees Jet with his knees pulled up to his chest, fingernails biting into the stalk of wheatgrass wet at the tip, "I didn't know you—"

"I just waited up to tell you," he says as he stands, flicking the piece of grass into the stones between his feet, his eyes laid at a point just over Zuko's shoulder that makes him uneasy for a reason, "I have errands, you know, to start doing."

"Right," he answers quietly.

"I mean, 'Bee's got a job and she already gets on me about not doing my share. So, I don't think I'll be around much." His fingers scratch at the back of his head and he tilts his chin out, eyes raised and thoughtful but never making complete eye contact.

"That's, er, fine, I guess."

"Good," he nods, swivels on his heels, marches steadily, "'Night."

Zuko is too exhausted to read into it, but he knows it will mean something to regret in the morning.

…

He regrets it when he slides under his blankets, itchy and uncomfortable and blistering with heat with no one beside him to keep his thoughts at bay.

He gets an hour of sleep, tops.

…

When he walks into Pao's, Jet is chewing on a teacake with crumbs littered across the counter, his friends flanked beside him.

Zuko walks by him and pretends he can't remember the group of them; he hears that girl, Smellerbee, lean in to whisper to Jet and he can feel their eyes on him as he disappears into the back.

Deep, even pulses of breath.

He grits his teeth as he walks out and even though Jet's eyes track him as he walks behind the counter, he doesn't speak.

Zuko doesn't stop holding his breath until they're laughing their way out of the shop.

…

Jet's mouth is always rough in some way, he kisses too hard or his lips are too chapped or his teeth are nipping soft, sensitive spots, and it isn't different now; Zuko makes a noise that only gets swallowed up into Jet's throat, squirms and anticipates his toned arms pinning him down, but he only gets a surge of fresh air and the swollen pucker of Jet's lips as he stares and then purses them.

"I'm going," he announces abruptly, and Zuko huffs petulantly, because when does he _ever_ leave?

(When Zuko doesn't want him to, that's the answer, because he always tries to push him away and is never successful, not in the least.)

"Maybe I'll be back."

Zuko knows better than to hinge on that.

…

Zuko sees Smellerbee wandering outside the teashop with a dark look in her eyes; it narrows when she sees him.

He pretends not to know it's her.

…

When Jet shows up with his swords out, Zuko fights back the knot in his chest at the sight of him, angry and feral and out for blood, and _if he wants this, then I'll give it to him _gladly, _I'll give him a fucking show_.

He can feel the aggression rolling off of him and he wants to admit how nice it feels to use his swords, even if it's against Jet, but he should have known better, he should have known there were just some things he could never have.

Their swords cross and he hisses between them, "Like steel to rust," and he's sure it carries some weight, a virtue of his past taught to him by someone important, but all it means for them now is that things are deteriorating the way they were always meant to.

…

Zuko watches them carry him away. He was never supposed to get this close anyway.

…

**notes** — sorry that this makes no sense, i mean, really.


	6. —trust

**title** — don't stay  
**pairing** — jet & zuko  
**warnings** — sexual situations and adult themes  
**etc** — none

…

Sometimes when Jet's lips are too hot on the slant of his neck or his fingers are too tight around the angle of his hips, this almost feels like a real thing to him, a relationship that isn't suffering in all the fundamental ways.

If he can call this tangle of sheets a relationship.

But nearly every time he finds himself on the edge of climax with Jet's hand around the base of his cock and his breath spilling down the curve of his spine, he remembers how hollow he feels, even as he moves in a daze to drape his limbs over the dark skinned boy beside him, that the only substance in this twisted rendezvous of theirs is the way that they leave their bodies so vulnerable and open to one another.

Sex _does_ things, terrible things that make Zuko's heart race out of control, like give him the illusion of something deep lying in the crevice between their bodies. Like affection, or the word that he's sure is pressed tight against the backs of Jet's teeth, waiting to hiss out and shatter everything.

If Jet ever plucks up the raw, foolish courage to say it, it will ruin everything, force Zuko to stare the truth and this perspective of subliminal war behind these walls in the center of its eyes, and he's not quite ready for that.

There's something about the way Jet's kisses burn when he trails them along his skin, laced with guilt and blissful ignorance that make them sear into him, remind him that he has a long way back home, if he ever finds the strength to start back on that road.

Jet murmurs something into his neck and it is conveniently quiet, so Zuko hums and winds an arm underneath his, smears their sweat-slicked skin together and places his hope in that this will be ruined, whatever it is between them.

He prays it will be ruined before it is over (because that means it is ending, that _someone_ will have to end it, and he doesn't trust himself to do that.)


	7. —memory

**title** — don't stay  
**pairing** — jet & zuko  
**warnings** — heartbreaaaak  
**etc** — none

…

_There is no war in Ba Sing Se._

But there are places in his mind that ache with an emptiness that Jet can't explain away, just faint daydreams of ambiguous figures and surges of feelings through his skin. There are meaningless things in his life, trinkets he finds and slowly throws away when he cleans through his apartment—wilted flowers tucked into pockets of his clothes, a dagger he carries and intends to sell, a coupon for tea that he gives to Longshot because he appreciates the calming effects of simple things like silence and books and tea better than he ever could.

Jet knows there is something alive in his blood, a virulent thing that used to tear its way through his veins with passion and ardor and all the reasons people go from _breathing_ to _living_, but he can't put his thumb down on the pulse of it.

…

Zuko curls in on himself, back pressed against the chilling stone of the alley, shallow breaths brushing against his knees as he tries to think. _Days_, he thinks, _it has to have been days_, because he thinks he has been keeping count but everything blurs together except _Jet_. He is a prominent imprint in his mind, a tangled body with regret like blood running through its veins, skin stretched with every truth that Zuko stretched all the same, every shifting lie he whispered with his body so close.

He finds that he clings to dark memories like these, all of the beautiful things he could have had for fleeting moments at a time, like Jet's crooked smile and his endearing persistence and the annoying way that Zuko was starting to think about staying in this miserable, wall-blocked city. He digs his fingers into these terrible emotions so deeply that it seems covetous, but he hates them, because it floods his mind every waking moment of the day and he can _never_ chase those thoughts away.

There is no home for him in this city.

…

_He has swords_, Jet thinks as he taps his shoulder, but his eyes go wide at the sight of him before he can hold in his shock. The color of his scar bursts in the center of Jet's mind with a stabbing sensation, because suddenly he knows the shade of red it becomes under a blush and the way it looks crimson in the middle of the night and the way it fades under his hands.

Jet stares and clenches his fingers tight around the dagger in his hand, and somehow he feels the ghostly brush of fingers against his as the dagger slides into his palm, and he holds his hand out, still staring at this boy with swords who has been in his life before.

Curiosity spikes in his blood, but Jet knows there is no need for it, none at all because clearly, he's forgotten, for _reasons_.

"I have a feeling," Jet says, "that you'll want this back."

…

It hurts Zuko the most, that they made him forget.

…

**notes** — late, but done now! hope everyone had a nice jetko week :)


End file.
